


Red Eyes

by TheCopperSoulBox (ProbablyJozo)



Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chronic Illness, Crossover, Fainting, Fire, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not RPF, One Shot Collection, Temporary Character Death, kagerou project - Freeform, older and newer yogs appear, powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21894064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyJozo/pseuds/TheCopperSoulBox
Summary: “Thus began the longest August 14th of my life.”A collection of crossover one-shots in no particular order, based on the Kagerou Project series featuring a whole lotta yogs. Confused? Well, you’re not alone.
Relationships: Joakim Hellstrand & Duncan Jones, Joakim Hellstrand & Zoey Proasheck, Lewis Brindley & William Strife, Tom Clark/Ben Edgar
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	1. Chasing After Yesterday’s Sunset

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. You’re probably confused.
> 
> This is (or will be) a collection of one-shots based on different stories in a series called the Kagerou Project. Feel free to check it out (just search it on youtube)—but there is a lot to unload and you gotta piece the story together yourself. Or maybe this will be completely random and won’t follow a concrete plot. Who knows.
> 
> But you don’t need that to read these, so enjoy!
> 
> First chapter is based off the song Yuukei Yesterday (translation: Yesterday's Sunset/Yesterday Evening)

The new school day was _not_ something Bedgar wanted to be dealing with.

He was tired—all thanks to the fitful sleep he’d had the night prior, which was somehow more sleep than he got on the average night—and every student around him was insistent on being loud. It pierced into his skull and, in an attempt to counter it, he pulled his headphones over his ears and tried to weave his way through the crowd.

“Bedgar! Hey!”

A familiar call caught his attention and Bedgar spun around to find the culprit: one grinning Angor, standing near the cafeteria and waving at him. Giving a tired smile back, Bedgar made his way over, wondering how someone could seem so awake at half past eight in the morning.

Well, Angor didn’t have to put up with stupid-ass sleeping spells, so that probably explained it. He had bigger problems to deal with.

“Bad night, huh?” Angor asked, taking in Bedgar’s unkempt appearance with amusement.

“Better than most, actually,” Bedgar answered. “If you could believe it.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Well fuck you, then.”

Angor let out a chuckle and for a moment Bedgar felt his heart skip—but he quickly shut that down. Everything was stacked against them in their unique situation, such as his own irritable nature that sometimes came out due to his tiredness, so there was no point in trying to indulge in some hopeless fantasy. He just had to work with what he had.

Angor led the two of them through the halls to their classroom, which was really just a spare room they had adopted as their classroom due to being the only students who needed ‘special attention’, which Bedgar wanted to scoff at. Randomly fall asleep a few too many times in lesson and that lands you in a special class with one other classmate? Not fair.

Angor, unfortunately, had a much more legitimate reason for being there.

As a young boy, he had been diagnosed with a chronic illness that meant his life was constantly at risk. Angor was prone to random attacks that hospitalised him, and Bedgar had witnessed him collapsing in class enough times that he had almost learned to get used to it. Compared to his own non-threatening narcolepsy, Angor’s illness needed a lot more attention—so Bedgar tried not to complain too much.

Although sometimes he struggled when his brain simply wouldn’t switch on in the morning.

With his headphones sat around his ears, he sat slumped at his desk, waiting for their teacher to arrive and idly doodling a shark onto his hand. Angor, who was writing something in his notebook, took note.

“Dude, you’re getting too obsessed with sharks,” he claimed, speaking up slightly in case Bedgar couldn’t hear him through his headphones.

“Sharks are cool,” Bedgar countered, turning to his friend. “Although I guess you wouldn’t see that, given your dark aesthetic.”

“Hey, it’s not a ‘dark aesthetic’, I just happen to like wearing robes that make me look mysterious, okay?” Angor argued. “And aren’t sharks kinda dark and scary anyways?”

“I’m talking about the blue ones.”

“So?”

“They’re not dark!”

“Sure.”

“Whatever,” Bedgar said, pushing himself up from the desk. “I’m gonna go see if I can find sir…”

He was only able to take a couple of steps before a muffled snort stopped him in his tracks.

“What?”

“Your, uh...your headphones aren’t plugged in?”

“...?!”

Shocked, Bedgar looked down to notice the end of his headphone cord hanging loose by his side, having been yanked out of his bag as he had stood up. _A traitor_ , he considered it, as the loose cord had just let Angor know that he hadn’t actually been listening to music all that time.

“Wow. You really don’t want me to talk to you or something?” Angor asked, still snickering at the dumbfounded and guilty look on Bedgar’s face.

_More like I don’t want you to know I’ve been secretly listening to you mumble to yourself_ , Bedgar thought to himself, although he obviously wasn’t about to admit that out loud. “You- uh- no! I...shut up!”

Angor burst into laughter at that, and with an indignant squawk, Bedgar fled the room to hide his warming face.

* * *

One lunchtime, Bedgar was sat with Zoeya (a girl he’d made friends with during the school’s spring fair) in the little tucked away corner they had claimed as their own. As they waited for Angor and Rythian (a boy Bedgar had met through Zoeya) to arrive with their lunch, the two of them chatted amicably.

Somehow, the topic had made it to Angor.

“I don’t think I could deal with school without him,” Bedgar claimed, leaning back on his hands. “I mean, he’s funny, for one, and he likes telling stories and playing video games and the like. Plus he puts up with me. I dunno what I’ll do when...you know.”

“Do you like him?”

Bedgar’s heart beat a little faster at the question, but he played it cool. “Well, yeah. He’s my best friend.”

Zoeya raised an eyebrow at him. “You know that’s not what I mean. Come on, dude, do you think I’m blind? I’ve seen the way you look at him when his back is turned.”

“I…”

Caught like a mouse, Bedgar could only sigh as he withered under Zoeya’s knowing gaze.

“Maybe I do, okay?” he admitted, slouching back against the wall as Zoeya gasped in delight. “But! I’m- nothing’s going to happen anytime soon. It won’t...we can’t.”

“Why not?” Zoeya asked, as if what Bedgar had just said was ridiculous and not completely logical like he thought it was.

“Well, you know our situation,” he started. “It just…wouldn’t be easy, you know? And he doesn’t like me back.”

“No relationship will ever be ‘easy’,” Zoeya countered. “And how can you be so certain that—”

“Bam! Food has arrived,” Angor announced, sauntering around the corner with his notebook tucked under one arm and some boxes of food in the other. Behind him, Rythian also appeared holding food. “Lunch for the hungry.”

“It was either just chips or uncooked chicken nuggets, so I did you a favour,” Rythian said, handing Zoeya a half-full box of chips and taking a seat. “And I also got you cookies,” he added as an afterthought, much to Zoeya’s delight.

Bedgar graciously took one of the boxes from Angor and started digging in as his friend made himself comfortable on the ground. As he did so, he set his notebook down, and Bedgar’s eyes latched onto the pencil that was sticking out of it, clearly marking one of the pages.

“Are you working on something?” he asked through a mouthful of chips, and Angor took a moment to laugh at him before answering.

“Just a drawing,” he replied, flicking the notebook open. “I’ve been doodling this in my spare time. You really like sharks, and I look fucking cool in my mystery robes, so I decided to try and draw the two of us together.” When he got to the right page, he pushed the notebook forward and the other three teens crammed around it.

“Aw, that’s adorable,” Zoeya commented as Bedgar took in the picture. It was him, dressed in what he assumed was a shark onesie, and Angor, wearing his ‘mystery robes’ that made him look like an alien overlord (which was probably exactly what he wanted). As much as Angor clearly wasn’t an artist, it was still a fairly decent drawing, and Bedgar was quite touched by the thought put into it.

“I love it,” he claimed genuinely, looking up at Angor who beamed at him.

“Thanks, Bedgar.”

“It is quite cute,” Rythian agreed. “Really shows how close you two are.” Bedgar met Zoeya’s eyes then, and she looked at him as if to say ‘are you sure he doesn’t like you back?’

He shook his head at her.

“Yeah,” Angor said, oblivious to the exchange between Bedgar and Zoeya. “Best friends for as long as forever lasts, right, Bedgar?”

The phrase, which had been coined by Angor almost a year ago, put a spike through his heart. It always reminded him that what they had was doomed to end—they couldn’t have forever, after all. Every hospital trip just solidified that fact.

Yet still, he made sure to enjoy what he had.

“Best friends for as long as forever lasts,” Bedgar repeated, smiling at Angor and hoping he wouldn’t notice how much he hated to say it.

* * *

Summer classes were the worst.

Somewhere along the line, their teacher had decided that Bedgar and Angor needed some ‘catch-up lessons’ to help their grades; Angor because of his poor attendance due to being in hospital, and Bedgar because he was just plain struggling. And although he was well aware of this, Bedgar still despised the fact that he was giving up his precious summertime in order to learn stuff he didn’t care about. He wasn’t even sure if schools were allowed to do this.

Still, there they were, on August 14th (which was definitely _not_ a day for school), sitting at their desks and scrawling away at some dumb worksheet. Or rather, _he_ was scrawling away at his dumb worksheet while Angor was tugging his laptop out of his bag, since he was already done. In all honesty, Angor didn’t really need to be there since he was probably smart enough to not need the extra classes—but Bedgar appreciated the company anyway.

It meant they got to spend time together.

Since it was summer, their teacher (who was currently out of the room) didn’t mind what they did when they were done, so when Bedgar glanced over at Angor’s laptop screen he wasn’t surprised to see Warhammer loading up.

“I love that you’ve gotten so invested in that game,” he said flippantly, ignoring his work to lean over.

“What can I say?” Angor replied. “You got me hooked. And hopefully, if I keep playing, I’ll get good enough to beat you one day.”

Bedgar snorted. “As if. I’m the champion of the people, the undefeatable, no-one could ever—”

“Sure, mister I-once-broke-my-screen-by-punching-it,” Angor interrupted him, eyes locked on his laptop.

“...That was one time,” Bedgar muttered bitterly, but when Angor didn’t answer (completely absorbed by his game) he grabbed his headphones from where they sat upon his bag and pulled them over his ears, knowing he wasn’t going to get much more conversation anytime soon. With music blasting into his ears, he went back to tackling his worksheet.

About ten minutes later, and with no return of their teacher, he found himself completely stuck.

“Hey, Angor,” he called out, slipping his headphones off but keeping his eyes on the worksheet. “How d’you do number nine?” Silence met his question, which was unusual, because Angor almost always answered him. “Angor?”

Curious, he turned to look at the other boy—only to see him collapsed on the desk, eyes closed and arms limp. He’d had an attack.

“Oh, FUCK!”

Bedgar had no idea how long Angor had been out for, which was _bad_ , because he could have fainted almost ten minutes ago and he had been completely clueless. His friend had obviously tried to get his attention, given the way he had collapsed on the side of the desk nearest Bedgar—but he had been so focused on his work, and his music had been too loud, and _holy shit_ his friend might die because of him.

“What’s going on?” his teacher said, bursting into the room at just the right time. He must have heard the shout. “Are you okay? Angor—oh my god.” Immediately, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed for an ambulance.

“Angor…” Bedgar whispered, reaching out to the unconscious boy with a shaky hand. “Angor, I’m so sorry.”

He couldn’t remember much that happened after that; his teacher tried to comfort him, the paramedics came, they took Angor on a stretcher to the ambulance outside and Bedgar followed behind like a lost puppy. At some point, he was told that Angor would be okay—but that was a close call, and they would have to keep an eye on him.

“How about you go and get his stuff so we can take it to the hospital?” his teacher suggested, and Bedgar only nodded numbly and made his way back towards the school building.

For some reason, on his way back, he bumped into Zoeya.

“Oh! Bedgar, hey,” she greeted him, although she seemed slightly distracted.

“Hey,” he responded. “Uh- what are you doing here? Did you have to take summer classes too?”

“Um, yeah!” Zoeya replied. “Yeah, that’s why...yeah. Are you alright? You look shaken.”

“I’m alright, I just…” Bedgar sighed. “Angor just had an attack. He tried to get my attention but I couldn’t hear him, and I don’t know how long he’s been out for, and the doctors say he’ll be okay but it was really close and if I’d noticed a little later then that might have been too late and then—”

“Woah matey!” Zoeya said, putting a hand on his arm and cutting off his rambling. “Don’t think about that. You said he’s alright, yeah?” Bedgar nodded, swiping at the tears that had gathered in his eyes. “Then he’s alright. Don’t focus on what could have been, because what you have now is as good as it can be. No need to upset yourself further.”

“I...thanks, Zoeya,” Bedgar said, giving her a small smile.

“No problem. C’mere.” She opened her arms and Bedgar fell into them, hugging her as he felt his panic slowly fade. “I think you should tell him.”

“What, that I…”

“Yeah.” Zoeya pulled back, patting his shoulder. “If you don’t, you might end up regretting it, you know?”

“...Maybe,” Bedgar said honestly. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer. See you later?”

“Um, yeah! Bye, Bedgar.”

Making his way back to their classroom, Bedgar thought about what Zoeya had said. It was no secret that Angor didn’t have too long left—his attacks had become more frequent than in previous years, and Bedgar had noticed him getting physically weaker as well. He’d have to tell him how he felt sooner rather than later, if he was going to tell him at all.

Which, now that he thought about it, he really wanted to do, because Zoeya was right when she said he would regret it if he didn’t.

So that’s what he was going to do.

With his mind made up, Bedgar spun on his heel and started running. It hadn’t been too long—if he ran fast enough, he could get to the ambulance before it left, so he’d be there if Angor woke up and he could tell him as soon as he could. It might not have been the best plan, and maybe he wasn’t thinking straight, but all Bedgar’s mind could focus on was running.

But then the edges of his vision started getting dark.

_Not now! I can’t fall asleep now! Goddamnit!_

Still, the world kept getting darker, and when Bedgar tripped over himself and fell to the floor he found that he didn’t have enough energy to push himself back up.

_This isn’t fair_ , he thought to himself as he fought the urge to close his eyes. _This isn’t fucking fair!_

Through the haze of darkness, Bedgar spotted a figure making its way towards him—his teacher, he presumed, although he couldn’t be sure. What was his teacher doing back in the school? Looking for him?

He didn’t care.

“Angor…” he whispered, reaching out and desperately trying to stay awake.

“...I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit: the last section was taken off and moved to How Sharky Came To Be, because it didn't feel right having it at the end of this one. Plus, isn't this ending so much better?


	2. That's My Couch You're Sleeping On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rythian wakes up in the middle of the night to see Zylus sneaking back into the hideout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a shorter one to make up for the beast that was the last one (which I might edit and separate...not quite sure yet).
> 
> This takes place two years after Chasing After Yesterday's Sunset, and hey! People have abilities now! Rythian doesn't have one yet, but Lalna can change people's perceptions of him (whether he's hiding what he's really doing or just straight up posing as another person/being) and Rythian knows this.
> 
> I wrote this at 2am so expect this to make less sense than the last one. Based off a moment in the Kagerou Daze novels that I really like.
> 
> TW - Implied suicide

The sound of a door opening and closing pulled Rythian from his sleep.

For a moment he was disoriented—he wasn’t in his room but instead on a couch in a house that wasn’t his—but then he remembered the events of the day before. Him going outside for the first time in two years, the department store getting attacked, Sharky taking over a whole bunch of computer screens (which was admittedly awesome), passing out and waking up in a hideout with a bunch of people who all had different powers. It was a lot to take in, so he decided that for that moment he wasn’t going to bother.

The room, save for the door he had heard, was oddly peaceful. Rythian knew that Sharky was currently ‘asleep’ (or whatever the alternative was) on his phone, and across the room on a different couch he could see the guy they called ‘Palp’ sleeping soundly. He had a lot of questions for Palp, such as why he didn’t know his own name and how he was so extraordinarily strong, but the guy seemed so unknowing at times that he probably couldn’t give any answers. There was also Bouphe somewhere in the room, although Rythian didn’t know a lot about her because she hadn’t said much to any of them, and the others were in their respective rooms in the hideout.

So who had just walked in?

Squinting into the dark, Rythian managed to make out the figure of one of the only people in this group he was familiar with—and only because they had been neighbours for as long as he could remember.

“Zylus?” he called out softly, catching the younger boy by surprise. “What are you doing up so late?”

For some reason, Zylus’ eyes were glowing red, which meant he was using his ability—but Rythian didn’t feel any of the effects.

“Oh, uh, Rythian!” Zylus exclaimed quietly, noticing the only other person awake in the room. Something about his voice seemed off. “I was just...going out for a walk, that’s all. Heh.”

“This late though?” Rythian sat up to tap his phone and, completely ignoring Sharky who was drifting across the screen in his sleep, checked the time. “It’s two in the morning, man! You couldn’t just sleep it off?”

“I just wanted to process everything. You know, be alone for a bit. A lot has happened today, Rythian!”

“I know, I know. I’m just worried, that’s all.”

“Well I’m alright. You should go back to sleep.”

“I will.” Rythian watched as Zylus made his way across the room, but before he could leave he called out again. “Oh, and Lalna?”

The boy froze.

“Zylus doesn’t speak like that, and your accent’s off.”

‘Zylus’ turned around and looked at him in disbelief for a moment—then, in the blink of an eye, Lalna had replaced the image of Zylus on the other side of the room.

“You’re more clever than you look,” he commented off-handedly, peering in curiosity at Rythian. “But you caught me, so I gotta give you that.”

“What were you doing outside?” Rythian asked, only because he couldn’t help himself.

“I wasn’t lying to you,” Lalna started, and Rythian laughed at that in his head. _Isn’t your whole power about deceiving people?_ “I was just out for a walk. I do that all the time, ask the others, they’ll tell you so.”

“Alright then,” Rythian said, deciding not to question it. “So why did you come back disguised as Zylus?”

Lalna studied him as he responded. “I figured you’d be the most likely one to be awake, and...well, I thought you would ask less questions to Zylus than you would to me. But obviously _that_ backfired.”

“Yeah,” Rythian agreed. “You don’t exactly make yourself easy to trust.”

“I’m well aware of that, _Rythian_ ,” Lalna hissed, all of a sudden glaring at him. He wasn’t quite sure why, probably hit a nerve or something, but whatever wariness Lalna had felt about Rythian before had suddenly turned to annoyance. “You think I don’t know that I’m not a trustworthy person?”

“No, I…” Rythian trailed off. What could he say here? Half of the things that came to mind would probably piss off Lalna even more. “I just meant…”

“You’re not much better yourself, you know,” Lalna continued, striding forward until he was standing over Rythian. “Pushing people away, being ignorant to things right in front of your nose. You know who would still be alive right now if you had just been paying attention?”

Rythian, completely confused (or possibly in denial), shook his head and blinked.

And suddenly, standing in front of him, was Zoeya.

Zoeya who he had lost two years ago because she had jumped off a building.

“Why didn’t you notice, Rythian?” Her voice, which was much more accurate than Zylus’ had been, shocked him still. _It’s not her_ , he had to remind himself, _Lalna’s messing with you_. “Why didn’t you notice what I was doing?”

“Zoeya…” he whispered, trying to force himself from reacting too heavily. Her eyes were red like Zylus’ had been, and Rythian desperately tried to use that to remind himself that this was just Lalna using his ability. _He’s trying to hurt you_.

_Why is he trying to hurt you?_

“It’s your fault I’m gone,” ‘Zoeya’ continued. “You could have stopped me.”

“No,” Rythian muttered. He couldn’t let himself get stuck in the past—he knew he shouldn’t have pushed her away, but he couldn’t change what he’d done. He’d been running away from this. “ _No_.”

“Why didn’t you do anything, Rythian?” Her voice was getting louder. He started scrambling back on the couch, trying to get away from what he could see, trying to escape the red eyes that were piercing into his soul.

“Stop it.”

“You could have prevented all of this.”

“Stop it!”

“ _This is all your fault_.”

“STOP IT!”

Close to tears, Rythian curled up on himself, squeezing his eyes shut to block out the image of Zoeya staring him down with cold, red eyes. After a few moments of nothing else, he warily opened his eyes again.

Lalna had vanished from the room.

 _That wasn’t her_ , he repeated like a mantra in his head. _That wasn’t real, that was Lalna, that wasn’t her_.

The room had gone back to being quiet, with the others in the room somehow undisturbed by the commotion. Uneasily, and with the image of a hateful Zoeya in his head, he slowly let himself drift back to sleep.

Maybe he could convince himself it was a dream in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now you know why this is called Red Eyes lol
> 
> In case you're wondering, Zylus' ability is that he can draw the attention of anybody (and everybody) around him. As of this moment, he can't actually control it—which is partly why Rythian was surprised that he didn't feel overly drawn to Zylus.


	3. How Sharky Came To Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Bedgar became Sharky, plus a little bit afterwards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first section of this one was originally the final section of Chasing After Yesterday's Sunset, but I decided to take it off and expand it because it kinda just worked better. Also this probably answers none of the questions you had the first time you read this, to which I apologise, because I unfortunately tend to forget that readers don't actually have the same information as me. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! I'll try to answer as best as I can.

_Where the fuck was he?_

Bedgar stared down at the body he could see on the other side of the screen. _That was him._ It had to be. He knew what his face looked like, he knew nobody else looked like him. Yet the last thing he could remember was dropping asleep in the school hallway, trying to get to Angor—so how did he end up here?

His body was surrounded with wires that connected him to different machines, and to an unknowing eye you could guess that he was in a hospital; but he'd seen a hospital room before, every time Angor ended up there, and this wasn't it. So what was going on?

And also why wasn't he in his own body?

He didn't look dead, at least. If he looked close enough, he could see himself breathing—he mostly just looked asleep, which was weird. He'd never seen what he looked like asleep before.

Something buzzed behind him and he turned around in surprise, only to be met with a wall of ones and zeroes and electrical pathways.

He was in a computer network.

One of the paths was pulsing, beckoning him closer and drawing him in, and he was incredibly tempted to follow it. So with one final glance back at his body—still asleep and probably not about to go anywhere—Bedgar darted down the path and into the network. All around him were things he couldn't understand, such as binary and data that wasn't his to look at, yet he still somehow knew exactly where he was supposed to go. It took a few minutes, but eventually Bedgar found himself in front of another screen; and this time he caught his own reflection.

He looked relatively like himself: same hairstyle, same size body. But his legs trailed off into digital nothingness just past his knees, so he didn't have any feet (and, thinking about it now, he couldn't feel his feet either—he had been floating around this whole time). He also noticed that he was incredibly blue: his eyes were bright blue, his hair was tinged blue at the tips, and his hoodie and jeans were also different shades of blue. In fact, he seemed to be wearing a shark hoodie—not quite the shark onesie Angor had drawn him in, but it was still on-brand.

Movement on the other side of the screen caught his eye, and Bedgar finally took in the room he could see. It looked like a typical teenage boy's bedroom—that is, unkempt and cluttered—but for some reason Bedgar thought he recognised the room. The movement had come from the door, which had been pushed open, and a familiar figure had made itself known.

_Rythian?_

The boy looked dishevelled and tired, as if he hadn't seen sunlight in several days, and a distant part of Bedgar wondered what had happened to him. He had always been the least excited of the four whenever they got together, but not to this extent.

It was at this moment that Rythian glanced at his computer screen and spotted the digital boy.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!”

“Uh, hi!” Bedgar greeted nervously as Rythian marched up to the computer in disbelief. He paused afterwards—did his voice sound higher than it used to?

“What the...who are you?”

_So you don't recognise me, huh?_ Bedgar thought to himself. Part of him almost announced who he was, but then he paused. Rythian didn't look to be in the best of places right then, so would it really be a good idea to let him know that one of his friends now lives as a cyber-being in his computer? That wasn't exactly something you tell people in bad mental spaces.

So, he came up with a solution.

“I'm Sharky, and I think you might be stuck with me.”

* * *

Over time, Bedgar started to get a grip on the new situation.

It had been a couple of weeks, and in that time Rythian simply hadn’t left his house. Every so often he’d left his room to get something to eat or go to the toilet, but essentially he’d holed himself up in his room and hid away from the world, with only a cyber guy called Sharky as company.

In those few weeks, Bedgar hadn’t heard anything from Zoeya or Angor, which was strange. He could guess what happened to Angor—the last time he’d seen him was when he was being pulled into an ambulance, and although the doctors had said he was going to be alright, Bedgar couldn’t help but assume the worst. The thought hurt his heart, but there was nothing he could do.

The absence of Zoeya, on the other hand, was a mystery.

Seeing Rythian without Zoeya had been a rare occurrence back when Bedgar was...well, _himself_ , really. The two had latched onto each other, almost like how he’d gotten attached to Angor, so it didn’t make sense for Rythian to be hiding away for so long without Zoeya showing up at some point. Had something happened? Rythian never said anything about it, and Bedgar didn’t want to leave Rythian’s computer for fear of getting lost in the network, so what could he do?

It turned out, in the end, that something he could do was snoop.

Sometimes, when he wasn’t mindlessly scrolling through the internet, Rythian would write. Most times he had no qualms about Bedgar (or rather, Sharky, as he had started to refer to himself as, because he sure wasn’t Bedgar anymore) watching over his work, but there were certain times where he would plain refuse to write until Sharky had busied himself doing something else. All of those documents got saved in a separate folder, and somewhere along the way Sharky had figured out that he had access to _all_ of the files on Rythian’s computer whenever he pleased.

So what did he do? Open the folder while Rythian was asleep, of course. Because when it came down to it, he was still a teenage boy with no care for his friend’s privacy at heart.

The stories, written in a similar style to the others, were all connected by the characters and a general sense of grief. The four characters who appeared were consistent: a boy in a hospital bed, a boy who disappeared, a girl who had committed suicide, and the main boy who was torn apart by the loss of all of them. All the stories mentioned the day where everyone left, although they mostly focused on the girl.

Sharky had never been good at english literature, but he at least could figure out what all of these stories were about. Rythian was the main character, the boy who had lost all of his friends to tragedy—and boy was there a mixed bag of emotions there. Angor was the boy who spent his final moments in a hospital bed, being the only one of the four of them to spend a lot of time in hospital (confirming Sharky’s fear that the boy was dead—he didn’t want to dwell on it). Sharky himself had to be the boy who disappeared, which made him realise that Rythian had no idea that he had collapsed in the school that day. Poor guy must have looked for him one day only to not be able to find him or any information about what had happened to him, which was actually quite a terrifying thought. How many people knew that Bedgar was essentially dead to the world?

That left Zoeya, who was portrayed by the girl who committed suicide. Sharky had trouble wrapping his mind around that one.

Zoeya had always seemed so bright and cheerful every time he saw her, and she appeared to be quite content with her place in the world. Sharky knew that she had three adopted younger siblings, and that seemed like a massive emotional toll, but she was always so happy whenever she mentioned them, as if they were the light of her life. One time Zoeya had explained that the red scarf she wore was like a symbol between her and her siblings, and she wore that scarf everywhere, so it must have meant a lot to her.

She had been so happy. What changed?

Rythian seemed just as confused in the stories, not understanding what had led Zoeya to an untimely death, although he focused a lot more on the regret and guilt he felt. Thoughts of how he _should have paid more attention_ or he _shouldn’t have pushed her away_ and that _it’s all his fault_ were scrawled repeatedly across the pages, and it was written so desperately that Sharky knew it was what Rythian truly thought. For a fleeting moment, he wished he could reach out the computer and hug him.

Then, Sharky remembered when he had bumped into Zoeya on that fateful day. She had been compassionate, helping him to stop panicking about Angor and pushing him to admit his feelings, but she had also seemed distracted. Determined, yet nervous. Like she was on a mission that she didn’t really want to be on.

The stories made clear that Rythian lost everyone on the same day. Zoeya had been at the school on that day, claiming to be there for extra lessons, and even though Sharky hadn’t questioned it at the time, she hadn’t been that convincing.

The story pieced itself together in Sharky’s mind a bit too easily. He wanted to puke—he’d literally talked to her on that last day, yet he hadn’t realised that something was very wrong because he’d been panicking about someone else.

Some friend he was.

Quietly, Sharky closed the documents, exited the folder, and forced himself to ‘sleep’ so he could stop thinking about what he’d figured out.

He didn’t say much to Rythian the next day.

* * *

“DAMNED KEYBOARD!”

Sharky blinked, not at all surprised by the angry outburst. Rythian spent literally all of his time at the computer (and there had been two years of this, which was definitely not healthy but the boy was still alive, so whatever), so it made complete sense that he would start panicking when the keyboard and mouse stopped working. Remnants of cold coke dried up across the desk, and despite not being able to see the devices clearly, Sharky knew they were fucked.

Rythian, almost hyperventilating, was absolutely miserable.

“I mean...at least your computer still works!” Sharky tried, trying not to wither under the glare Rythian gave him.

“Yeah, but I can’t fucking _use_ it,” he hissed. “I don’t have any spares, either.”

“...I could become your keyboard and mouse,” Sharky suggested, messing around and clicking things on screen to prove his point. “You just tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it! I can also type things, you know. Did you know that? I don’t do it often.”

“I could just switch off the computer.” Rythian, evidently, wasn’t impressed.

“I’ll just jump onto your phone then!” Sharky countered, with a hint of smugness he didn’t usually have when he talked to Rythian. He’d gathered up the courage to explore the networks over the last two years, becoming used to the binary labyrinth, and eventually he figured out that he could get to Rythian’s phone, as long as it was plugged in.

He had also been back to where he had first appeared in the network—but nothing much had changed, and it just wasn’t a nice place to be, so he didn’t go back often.

“Then I’ll turn off my phone,” Rythian said, crossing his arms over his chest as if to dare Sharky to retaliate. He did.

“What’ll you do then?” Sharky asked, mimicking Rythian’s crossed arms. “Go outside? It’s not like you have much else to do in here.”

“I’ll—!”

Cornered, Rythian huffed. “Fucking...whatever, man. I need new stuff, this is irreparable. Could you search, like, Amazon or whatever for computer stuff?”

“Oh? So you do want to use me as your mouse and keyboard!”

“Shut up and search, Sharky.”

Content and amused with the situation, Sharky opened up Amazon and entered in his search. He scrolled through a couple of results before he noticed something, then paused.

“You don’t have prime?” he said, looking back at Rythian, who seemed stunned by the question.

“No?” he replied. “I don’t order shit, ever. Never thought I’d need it.”

“Well that’s too bad…” Sharky said, turning back to the search results. “Because without prime, these will all take around two weeks to get here. That’s two weeks without a computer, Rythian.”

“What?! No! Let me see.” Instinctively, Rythian grabbed his mouse and started to scroll—only to curse when he remembered it didn’t work. “Are you kidding— absolutely none of them?”

“None of the good ones, I think,” Sharky claimed, although he didn’t really care enough to look through them all, or to even check which ones counted as ‘good ones’. He was basing all of his knowledge off of the first page of results.

“God, I can’t spend two weeks without a computer, Sharky,” Rythian said, and the panic was visibly starting to set in again. “I’ll probably die!”

_You’d destroy yourself_ , Sharky corrected in his head, because he knew Rythian was still hung up over his friends and having no distraction from his thoughts would not be a good idea. “Would your mum be able to help?”

“She’d tell me to just go out and buy the stuff manually,” Rythian replied, face buried in his hands now. “There’s even a shopping centre ten minutes away from here, she’d force me to go there.”

“...That might be what we have to do, you know.” He hated to suggest it, mainly because of the backlash he’d get, but Sharky knew it was the better option. Rythian hadn’t been outside in _two years_ so the trip would do him good, and Sharky would rather not have him moping alone in his room with nothing but rotten thoughts and a digital shark boy to accompany him. It was simply the best thing they could do for several reasons, and despite the protests Sharky had become resolute in his decision.

“Look, Rythian, you want a new keyboard as soon as possible,” Sharky started, cutting off whatever excuse Rythian was going to say next. “And going outside will be good for you! Come on, just for one day. Please?”

Rythian stared at him, clearly conflicted, and he looked as if he wanted to say a thousand things at once—but in the end he just sighed.

“One day,” he said, standing up from his computer chair. Sharky lit up immediately. “Only for one day, alright? Not again.”

“Roger that, coach!” Sharky exclaimed, before zipping through the network and onto Rythian’s phone. When he got there, he could see the boy himself taking a white and purple jacket out from his closet—one that looked familiar to Sharky. It was the same jacket that Rythian had started wearing in their school days, and despite the two years that had passed it seemed to fit him well enough. Figuring he would be fine going out in his sweatpants, Rythian grabbed his phone and a pair of earplugs then made his way through the house.

At the front door, he sighed.

“Hello again, outside world,” he muttered to himself, and with Sharky at his side, he took his first steps back into the real world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise this almost sounded like an ad for Amazon prime but in reality I didn't know how else to kick Rythian out of his house, so...


	4. All Attention on Zylus - Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zylus tries to have a normal weekend for once. Needless to say, he doesn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to school means back to writing a paragraph a day but here we are.
> 
> I decided to split this into two because it was going to get super long and tedious otherwise. Still in the process of writing the next part, but hey, we're chugging along.
> 
> This one's based off the song Kisaragi Attention (Kisaragi is the name of the character) and takes place the morning before That's My Couch You're Sleeping On.

Zylus pulled his hood further over his face as he continued walking. Although the streets weren’t too busy, a fair amount of people were mulling about outside, which ultimately made him nervous. The more people around him, the more chance of him being spotted—and he didn’t want to deal with that.

Luckily, nobody was paying any attention to him, so he was safe for now.

The summer air felt warm and humid around him, to the point that even his sleeveless hoodie felt like too much, but he wasn’t about to take it off. If he did, he’d be showing his face—then people would start noticing him and coming up to him and his simple walk outside would be ruined. For all intents and purposes, he could have just stayed inside to save himself the hassle; but it was nice outside for once, and being holed up in his room didn’t exactly sound appealing (he would leave that to his neighbour Rythian). It just meant that his route featured more alleyways than the average person, and he had to make sure nobody saw his face.

The world, however, seemed to have other plans.

Somewhere along the way Zylus had lowered his guard, idly window shopping as he strolled down the street, when a sudden gust of wind blew his hood off his head. Frozen momentarily by surprise, his mind screamed at him to pull his hood back on—but the damage had been done. Already, someone across the street had noticed him.

“Is that Zylus?”

It was a simple question, louder than it should have been, yet it caught the attention of everyone around. All of a sudden, Zylus could feel everyone’s eyes on him—and the commotion started.

“I think it is!”

“Oh my god that’s Zylus!”

“Hey, I love that guy!”

Well. He didn’t really need a peaceful weekend anyway.

A crowd was starting to form in the street, everyone’s attention locked onto the poor boy in green, and he froze. Questions were being thrown about, phones pulled out to snap a picture, and the excitement was bordering on hysteria.

He had to run before he got trapped in the middle of it all.

Pushing his way through the thinnest part of the crowd, Zylus darted down the street, trying to find a path where he could lose the people who were starting to run after him. One turn of a corner led him to a chain fence that split the alley in two, and with practiced ease (gained from many situations that ended up like this) he clambered over the fence and dropped down on the other side. From his experience, he guessed that nobody would follow him over—but he kept running for a bit anyway, just in case.

Finding himself in a secluded park, Zylus finally got the chance to breathe.

He hated to think of where this had come from. When he was younger, he thought that he could always feel eyes on him, but nobody ever cared enough about him to make a fuss about it. The actual excitement around him started after he uploaded a single video onto the internet—and it went viral. It wasn’t a particularly interesting video (he only uploaded it to show to his friends) but people seemed to love it, and all of a sudden strangers knew his name and could recognise him easily in the street.

He hated it.

Sitting slumped on a bench with his hood pulled tight over his head, Zylus stared hard at the ground as his mind flitted uncomfortably between anger and panic. He just wanted to be able to spend a day on his own, without making a scene like he always did, but it just seemed like he couldn’t.

A pair of shoes walked into his line of sight, but he didn’t move from his position.

“Are you alright?”

Zylus, assuming the person was talking to someone else, didn’t react.

“Hello? Um…”

When nobody answered the person, Zylus glanced up, only to notice that he was looking back at him.

“I…” He didn’t know what to say. The guy, who could only be a couple of years older than him, seemed genuinely worried about how he was, instead of enamoured by him like everyone else. “...Why do you care?”

“There was a whole crowd forming around you and you were running away from it,” the guy stated. “Forgive me for being curious, but I just wanted to know if you’re okay.”

Zylus took a moment to study the stranger. He wasn’t too tall, probably just a bit taller than himself, and the smallest bit of stubble was present on what was otherwise an older teen’s face. His blue and white striped t-shirt and red jacket made him look casual, and somehow Zylus felt like he could talk to him.

“Honestly? Not really,” he said, and for a moment he thought the stranger was giving him an almost knowing look. “This happens every day, I’m kinda sick of it by now.”

“I get you, attention isn’t fun.” _I think my case might be slightly different_ , Zylus thought to himself, but he didn’t interrupt him. “My name’s Xephos, by the way. Just so I’m not much of a stranger anymore.”

“...Zylus.”

“So I’ve heard,” Xephos said with a chuckle, and Zylus smiled half-heartedly at the joke. “You gonna be okay out here?”

“I might just go back home,” Zylus replied, although a glance towards the street showed his hesitance. “Except I can’t really...get back without being spotted…”

“Hm.” Xephos seemed to contemplate something for a moment. “Well, if you don’t want to stay out here, you could hang out at mine for a bit? It’s out of the way, we won’t pass any crowded places or anything. I do have a couple roommates, but they’re cool.”

The offer, as kind as it was, took Zylus by surprise.

“How do I know you aren’t planning to murder me?” he asked, although a part of him knew that Xephos was genuinely being kind. For some reason, he could tell that he could trust Xephos—the mention of roommates made him nervous, but he let it slide. He didn’t want to be stuck in the park for another couple of hours. “Or that you’re a crazy person who knows me from the internet and is trying to get with me.”

Xephos laughed. “Well, my friends may call me crazy, but I can promise you I’m not a murderer or a creepy stalker.”

“Well, that’s fair enough,” Zylus said, standing up from the bench. He had no idea what he was doing, but somehow he wasn’t that scared about it. “I trust you. Lead the way.”


	5. All Attention on Zylus - Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zylus arrives at Xephos' apartment, only to find out something strange about its inhabitants, as well as himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter introduces the rest of the main characters who haven't been mentioned yet and starts trying to explain what's actually going on. I hope you don't mind exposition because boy howdy there's a lot of it here.

“Here we are.” Xephos pushed open the door to the apartment. “It’s not much, but it’s a safe place to be.”

Zylus took in the apartment in front of him. It was relatively small, with a living room on the right, a kitchen space on the left, and a hall at the back leading to what was presumably the bedrooms. Overall, it felt like a pretty comfortable place.

One of Xephos’ roommates was lounging on one of the couches when they walked in.

“Hey Xeph,” he greeted off-handedly, but then his eyes shifted to Zylus and he shot to attention. “Woah! Who’s the new guy?”

“His name’s Zylus, I invited him over,” Xephos explained, dutifully ignoring the suggestive look his roommate gave him as he walked up to him. In a quieter voice, but not quiet enough for Zylus to miss it, he muttered, “Lal, I think he’s like us.”

“What?” ‘Lal’ suddenly grew serious, losing the playful look he’d had in his eye. “Are you sure? How do you know?” He wasn’t that good at being quiet.

“What’s going on?” Zylus asked, nerves settling in all over again. He thought he would be safe when he followed Xephos. “What do you mean I’m ‘like you’? Xephos…”

“Don’t worry!” Xephos rushed to reassure him. “It’s nothing bad...for the most part.” Choosing not to elaborate, he turned back to Lal and left Zylus no more comforted than he had been. “You should explain.”

“Why me? And how do you know—”

“Just trust me, alright? He’s got to be. And you’re better at explaining things.”

“I don’t even know what he can—”

“Guys?”

Lal blinked and turned to Zylus—and for the first time, Zylus noticed his eyes were bright red. They stood out on his face, almost seeming to glow, and he had to wonder how he hadn’t noticed them before. He’d seen Lal’s eyes a minute ago, hadn’t he?

“Well, I guess if Xeph is so insistent,” Lal started, poking playfully at Xephos, who merely crossed his arms, “I better start explaining things. The name’s Lalna, nice to meet you, all that introductory bullshit. I don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it, but Xeph has decided to drag you into a new life! Hope you don’t mind.”

“What?” Zylus interrupted, as Xephos decked Lalna none-too-gently in his shoulder. He sputtered a bit in pain (unsurprisingly, because that hit seemed a little over-the-top), but when he looked back up again his eyes were no longer red, rather a normal light blue. What just happened?

“Take this seriously,” Xephos hissed, and Lalna nodded miserably as he massaged his shoulder.

“You may as well take a seat for this, I guess,” Lalna said, gesturing to the couches, and Zylus slowly moved over and sat down. He wanted to trust Xephos—and by extension Lalna too—but the whole situation was testing just how far his trust could go. He wanted the explanation; he just wasn’t sure if he was going to like it.

“Okay, so, basically, we’re part of this little group. We call ourselves a brigade, but we’re not part of a military or anything, and there’s only four of us. There’s me, Xeph and Honeydew—we’ve known each other for ages—and there’s also Sips, who Honeydew met a couple of years ago.” Zylus had no idea who Honeydew and Sips were, but Lalna didn’t seem to care. “And, uh, this might be the unbelievable part, but basically we all have powers.”

“Abilities,” Xephos cut in. “It’s better to call them abilities. They’re things we can do, not some amazing superpowers.”

“Same thing,” Lalna brushed him off. “We sort of live secretly because it’s safer or whatever. And now that you know about us, we gotta keep you around, so you won’t go off and tell everyone.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Zylus said, although he was still trying to wrap his head around this. They were acting all shady because they had abilities? What kind of world had he found himself stepping into?

And why did Xephos think he had an ability of his own?

“I can tell you don’t believe us,” Xephos stated. Zylus simply nodded, as much as he felt like they were being serious, because it seemed so otherworldly. “I mean, I guess there’s one way to prove it to you.”

Lalna gasped. “Wait, you’re gonna do it? You’re gonna do it in front of someone else to show it off?”

“It’s not that exciting, Lal.”

“I think it is.” With a pleased grin, Lalna dropped down onto the other couch, leaving Xephos standing on his own and debating whether or not to throw another punch. Eventually, he decided to just turn back to Zylus.

“Uh, you gotta look away for a moment for this to work,” he said, and Zylus cautiously shifted his gaze over to the wall on the other side of the room.

He didn’t know what he was expecting, but when Lalna announced, “Okay, you can look back now,” five seconds later, he wasn’t expecting Xephos to straight up _not be there_ anymore. There hadn’t been any footsteps, so he couldn’t have ran out the room, and when Zylus scanned the room he couldn’t find the older boy anywhere.

Lalna, strangely, was beaming at the empty space where Xephos had been. “You got him good,” he said, standing up and reaching out into the thin air, only to frown. “...Come on, man, it’s fun!”

Another bout of silence passed, and Lalna dropped his hand as he stood and watched the space, as if he was listening to someone. Then, his (blue) eyes slowly roamed across the room, eventually landing on Zylus who was slowly becoming more convinced that Lalna was actually crazy. His grin had returned to his face.

All of a sudden, a hand landed on Zylus’ shoulder.

“Agh!” He jumped at the unexpected contact, only to find himself face-to-face with a smiling Xephos, hand resting lightly on Zylus’ shoulder. His eyes, like Lalna’s had been, were distinctly red—although the colour was quickly fading back to blue.

“Surprise!” he said simply, and Lalna burst into laughter at the look of shock on Zylus’ face.

“What the fuck?” he managed to spit out, after merely gaping at Xephos for a moment. “You can...you can turn invisible?!”

“Well, I’m not exactly _invisible_ , per se,” Xephos started, still smiling slightly as he rocked back on his heels. “It’s more like I divert perception away from myself, so I’m there but nobody notices or recognises me, and I can also hide people around me—”

“Blah, blah, that’s too confusing, just say you go invisible, nerd,” Lalna interrupted his friend, making his way to stand with him.

“You’re calling me a nerd?”

“Yeah. Deal with it.”

Xephos gave a measured look to Lalna for a moment, then turned back to Zylus.

“So yeah, basically we can all do things like that,” he said.

“Alright…” Zylus trailed off. As much as his logical mind wanted to protest, he knew what he’d seen. They couldn’t be anything but serious at this point. Curiously, he turned to Lalna. “What can you do, then?”

“Me?” Lalna started, almost sounding surprised. “Well, I can, uh...change people’s perspectives of me, I guess. Like, I hide what I’m truly doing or, you know, turn into a cat. It’s more interesting than what Xeph can do.”

“It’s not a competition…”

“Well, if it was, I’d be winning.”

“Honeydew can read minds, though.”

“You know he doesn’t like doing it.”

“I think Xephos’ ability is quite useful,” Zylus decided to add in. “I wish I had the power to make people stop recognising me.”

For a moment, Xephos looked stunned. “Oh! Of course, that reminds me.” He sat himself down on the couch so he was level with Zylus, watching him curiously. “I wanted to ask. That crowd that was forming around you…is that a normal occurrence?”

“Uh...yeah, unfortunately,” Zylus confirmed, wondering where this was going. “It happens whenever I’m not hiding my face in public.”

“And you know how unnatural that is, right?” Xephos continued. “Everybody on the street was focusing on you and only you. That’s not normal.”

For a second, Zylus hesitated. The crowds had become such a normal occurrence for him that he never stopped to think about how strange it was. Was _everybody_ focused on him, every time? “It’s...normal to me, I guess. I’ve lived with it for like a year or two.” _Ever since I uploaded that stupid video_.

Xephos hummed in thought. “One more thing. You know your eyes turn red sometimes, right?”

“What?”

“Oh! Wait, hang on, I know why you’re so familiar now!” Lalna exclaimed, catching Zylus by surprise. “You went viral a couple years back, didn’t you? I remember now!”

“Lal…” Xephos growled in warning as Zylus wilted at the mention of the video. At this, Lalna quickly sobered up.

“I’ll go make myself useful,” he said, moving over to the kitchen area and slipping out of their sight.

“He’s just gonna eavesdrop, I banned him from using the kitchen so he doesn’t destroy anything,” Xephos told Zylus. Unconcerned, he got them back on track.

“So, my eyes turned red? When?”

“Well, in the video, for one,” Xephos said, causing Zylus to blanch. He’d always assumed that had been a trick of the light. “But also in the park. When I started talking to you, they were bright red. This was a couple of minutes after you ran from the crowd. They’re normal now, but they only turned back as we were walking here. I guess you had no way of knowing.”

“I had no idea,” Zylus admitted, trying to piece things together. Were people so interested in him because his eyes were red? “What does it mean? I’ve noticed you and Lalna have red eyes sometimes.”

“It happens when we use our abilities,” Xephos explained. “Usually you can’t see mine because you can’t see me, unless I’m hiding you as well. For Lalna it’s a clear sign that he’s faking a lot of bullshit.”

A cough from the kitchen sounded out, causing the two of them to chuckle.

“So...what? I have an ability?”

“I think you have the ability to move everybody’s focus onto yourself, or something like that. That explains why the video went viral, and why you have crowds forming around you on the street. You can’t control it because you weren’t aware you were doing it in the first place.”

“Huh.” When he thought about it, it did explain quite a few things. “That’s a shit ability, compared to yours and Lalna’s.”

“I think it could be useful once you learn to control it,” Xephos claimed. “And since you’re older and you know it’s happening, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out how to, you know, turn it off and on at will. I’ve had mine since I was about eleven, d’you know how frustrating that was? I’d vanish without realising and the others couldn’t find me, it made me feel like a ghost sometimes.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound fun,” Zylus said, although he couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous. Sometimes he wished he could vanish out of sight for a bit—he could walk the streets without a care in the world. But if Xephos was right, and he managed to learn how to control when his ability took effect...would people really not recognise him anymore? That sounded like a dream.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he quietly thanked his past self for deciding to trust Xephos and follow him to his home. For once, he finally felt like he had some hope for a future that wasn’t shrouded in constant anxiety.

* * *

Sips and Honeydew, Xephos’ other roommates, made themselves known around lunchtime.

Zylus had been chatting to Xephos and Lalna in the kitchen when Sips sauntered in, closely followed by Honeydew, and the elder quickly caught sight of the new person they were hosting. “Oh? What’s this, Xeph, found yourself a new friend?”

“Hey, Sips,” Xephos said, not turning away from what he was doing, and Lalna casually raised a hand in greeting. Zylus, on the other hand, found himself frozen still—he’d almost forgotten there were other people he was yet to meet. “This is Zylus, I met him in the park earlier, we figured out that he has an ability of his own.”

“What a strange way to meet people,” Honeydew commented, as Sips scrutinised his new possible victim. Zylus shifted uncomfortably on the counter.

“What can you do, then?” Sips asked, poking at him. “Hope it’s exciting, I’ve gotten too used to what the guys around here can do.”

“I can…” Zylus’ voice broke a bit, and he coughed to try and will himself to talk normally. “I can attract people to me, I guess? As in, move their attention onto me, not make them attracted to me, I didn’t mean…”

“Oh, is that why Xeph picked you up? He couldn’t take his eyes off you?” Sips teased, causing Honeydew and Lalna to giggle and Xephos to sputter. “Classic Xeph, honestly. Always looking for the attractive ones.”

“I started talking to him because he made an entire street go wild, and he was running away from it all,” Xephos protested, finally turning around to give Sips a dirty look. “He looked like he needed help.”

“Whatever you say, man,” Sips said, slinging an arm around his friend. “But don’t be so ashamed of your natural feelings.” Xephos growled lowly.

Honeydew, who was mostly just amused by this interaction, turned to their newcomer. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Zylus,” he greeted happily. “Welcome to the brigade! The more the merrier, as they say.”

“The more the merrier until we run out of space in our hideout,” Lalna, who had just been standing off to the side, stated. “Then I don’t think it’ll be that merry.”

“Hey, let the guy have his fun,” Sips said. “We got a newbie, he’s allowed to be excited.”

“Just pointing out facts,” Lalna rebutted, eyes blazing red as he pushed off the counter with a cocky smirk. “What’re you gonna do, stop me?”

In a blink, Sips’ eyes flashed red as well—and then Lalna was left frozen mid-step, smirk still on his face but completely unmoving. He almost looked like a statue.

“Yeah, I think I will stop you,” Sips answered, crossing his arms over his chest as he looked smugly at Lalna. Honeydew, completely amused by this, started prodding at Lalna insistently.

“Sips can freeze people for a period of time,” Xephos explained to Zylus quietly. “Like a Medusa but, you know, not permanent.”

“That’s because I’m part Medusa, baby,” Sips proudly exclaimed. “Got it from my mom who got it from my grandma. We were a fun little family.”

“I’m still not convinced that’s true.”

“Of course it is! Are you saying I don’t know my own family tree?”

As the two began to argue, and Honeydew kept poking at an unmoving Lalna, Zylus felt himself smiling at the scene. It was a strange situation—he had been dragged from his old life into this new one, after all—but he found he didn’t mind as much as he probably should. With people like these guys around him, he couldn’t see anything but hijinks ahead of him, and for once he was looking forward to whatever was coming next.

“Honeydew! Why were you trying to pry my mouth open?!”

Yeah, he could get used to this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really just added on the last bit because I wanted Sips to freeze Lalna, that was all.


	6. Saying The Words You Never Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A look into Xephos' past, before he met any of the friends he has now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo I really like this one, it feels a little disconnected from the rest of the story but I promise it's not. Might be a little OOC at times, but Xephos is a child in this one, so I get some leeway maybe?
> 
> At the start of this Xeph is 9, but for the rest he's about 10-11. For context, in the main part of the story he's about 17 going on 18.
> 
> Also: fun new character hooray! This one's based off the song 'Never Lost Word' and its related chapters in the novels.
> 
> TW: Fire

When he was younger, Xephos didn’t say a lot. He never had anything he wanted to say, and even if he did, he always found that he didn’t know how to say it. There wasn’t anyone around to talk to anyway, besides his mother—but even that wasn’t going to last.

“What’re you listening to, hm?” she hummed, reaching out a weak hand to ruffle his already messy hair. He didn’t answer, even though he knew exactly what the beat playing softly through his earbuds was. She didn’t press him. “I get it. Music’s a thing to cherish. I used to go to concerts all the time, you know, they were the highlight of my life. Maybe you should try going to one sometime.”

Xephos shifted his eyes away. He very much did not want to do that—too many people and they would all be _loud_ —and the sight of his mother recalling her happiness while stuck in a hospital bed was a little too sad to keep his eyes on.

She reached for his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I wish I could take you to a concert. You’d have fun, Xeph.”

He didn’t know what to say to that—he never did—so instead he gave her a small nod and lightly squeezed her hand back.

* * *

He couldn’t help but feel alien in the large bedroom (that was entirely his, he had to remind himself), despite having already been there for two weeks. When his mother passed, his uncle had reached out to take custody of him so he wouldn’t have to go to an orphanage—and with nothing to say in the matter, Xephos ended up living with family members he didn’t know he had.

It was a step up from his previous life, sure. That didn’t stop him from feeling out of place in the ornate building.

He missed the simplicity of his mother.

The bedroom door slowly swung open and Xephos pulled out an earbud as his intruder poked his head into the room; William Strife, his business-savvy older cousin, was looking at him expectantly.

“Dad’s asking what to make for dinner,” Will announced, his accent clear and confident. “It’s between pie and pasta. Your choice.”

_Pie or pasta_. He didn’t really mind either way, but his mind supplied him with a preference anyway. _Pasta sounds nice_.

Now came the hard part.

“P…” He hated how the word lodged itself in his throat. And how both words started with the same letter. “Passs…”

Wanting to leave it at that (because surely that didn’t sound like pie), he looked at Will pleadingly—but the older boy just gave him an encouraging smile.

“You can do it,” he said, gesturing for him to try again. _Why did he care so much?_

“Passt...uh…” He was sure the distress was clear on his face, but Will kept looking at him kindly regardless. “...P-Pasta.” His voice, unlike Will’s strong tone, sounded small and broken, and he hated it. Despite this, Will beamed at him.

“Pasta. You got it.” Finally, he made to leave, and Xephos turned back to his phone; but before the door clicked shut, Will paused, and leaned back into the room again.

“I’m not gonna give up on you, Xephos. Alright?” he said, a determined look on his face. “We’re family. I’m not about to let you disappear into the background.”

With that, he ducked out of the room, and Xephos was left staring at the shut door, not quite knowing how to feel.

* * *

“I think you’d look good in smart clothing,” Will stated, having joined Xephos in his room one day. They had both been sitting quietly before the conversation arose—Will reading a book and Xephos listening to music—so the random statement took Xephos by surprise.

“Why?” he said, although he wasn’t sure what he was asking. _Why do you think that? Why are you thinking about this at all? Why do you care?_

“I dunno, I’ve never seen you dressed smartly. I think the look would suit you,” Will replied. “No offence, but your current wardrobe makes you look a bit...meh.”

Huffing slightly, Xephos tilted his head down so the dark red cap on his head hid most of his face, and Will chuckled a bit at the sight.

“I think I’ve got some old clothes that might fit you, if you’d like to try them on?” he suggested, smile widening when Xephos nodded at him uncertainly. “Cool, gimme a second.” With that, he quickly made his way to his own room, leaving his book discarded on the bed. As he waited, Xephos’ fingers played with the hem of his t-shirt. He was comfortable in his own clothing, but if Will wanted him to try something else on...well, it couldn’t hurt to go along with it.

Will returned with a bundle of clothing folded neatly in his arms. “Here you go. It might be a bit big, but I think you’ll be fine.” He left the room again when Xephos carefully took the offered clothes, with a quick note of “Show me when you’re ready!”

Xephos examined the clothes in his hands: a dark red button-up, black slacks, white socks and white braces (that he didn’t know how to put on). It felt incredibly formal compared to what he usually wore, but it seemed like Will’s normal style, so he wasn’t too surprised. With a gentle sigh, he began to change.

Two minutes later, holding the braces in one hand, Xephos opened his door.

“Look at you!” Will said, the moment he caught sight of his younger cousin. “Told you it would suit you.” The shirt collar and cuffed sleeves felt foreign on Xephos’ skin, and the clothes were definitely oversized, but he’d caught a glimpse of himself in his mirror before and found that he wasn’t against the look. Will seemed to agree. “Why aren’t you wearing the suspenders?”

_I didn’t know what to do with them_. “I didn’t...I don’t…know…” His voice trailed off as he stumbled over his words, and he looked at Will in defeat. “I...can’t.”

For a moment he thought Will was going to make him say it properly—as he sometimes had been insistent on doing—but this time he took pity on him. “You don’t know how to put them on?” he guessed, and Xephos nodded. “Here, I’ll help.” Carefully, Will took the braces and draped them over Xephos’ shoulders, clipping them onto his trousers and adjusting them accordingly. Then, after a moment of consideration, he pushed them off his shoulders so they hung loosely by his sides. “There. It looks better like that, I think.”

“...Thank you, Will,” Xephos muttered, arms wrapped around his middle loosely in a self-comforting hug.

“No problem,” Will replied easily. “And there’s no need to sound so formal, you know. Smart clothes don’t mean formality.” Then, in an undertone that Xephos wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear, “Dad doesn’t seem to realise that.”

Xephos smiled slightly at the statement, having watched his cousin and uncle interacting enough times to know where Will was coming from. “Thanks,” he said, a correction of his previous gratitude, although still just as genuine.

With a fond chuckle, Will reached a hand out and ruffled his hair playfully.

* * *

This didn’t make any sense.

Last night, he’d gone to sleep after an ordinary day, with no expectations for the morning he would wake up to. Wake up the next day, and suddenly he was in a small basement, sat on the floor with his wrists cuffed to the wall. He was even dressed in the clothes he borrowed from Will. Who took the time to _dress_ him while he was asleep?

A glance around the room revealed he was in the basement of his uncle’s house—he’d been down here a couple of times looking for different things—and that he wasn’t alone in the room. Next to him, Will was also bound to the wall (with rope instead of handcuffs), and was watching him worriedly.

“You’re awake,” Will whispered, relief and fear laced through his voice. “Thank god.”

“What’s happening?” Xephos asked, squirming uncomfortably against the wall. The warm air smelled kind of funny. A little bit like smoke.

“I don’t know, Xeph,” Will replied truthfully, and Xephos noticed that he sounded drowsy, as if he had only just woken up himself. Slumped against the wall in what definitely must have been an uncomfortable position, he almost looked too tired to care about moving, as if he was in the half-drunk state that Xephos sometimes saw his uncle in. “Are you alright? Not too tired or anything…?”

It was then that Xephos realised that, although he had just woken up, he still felt extremely tired himself. He decided to ignore this. “I’m alright,” he said, his hands shifting in the cuffs in discomfort. Made for an adult, they felt somewhat loose around his wrists. “Why are...why are we in the basement?”

“...I don’t know,” Will muttered, apologetic and defeated, as if he hated not having any answers for the younger boy. It was a far cry from the bold and confident older cousin that he was used to. “I...I really don’t...I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Xephos said, the words foreign on his tongue since he was so used to Will being the one to comfort him. Their situation was decidedly _not_ okay, but Will sounded like he needed the reassurance.

“It’s not,” Will replied, echoing Xephos’ thoughts. “But thanks.”

They lapsed into silence then, and to fill the time (because what were they even waiting for, anyway?) Xephos decided to try tugging at the handcuffs. He knew it would be a futile attempt, but he figured there was no harm in trying, and there was no surprise when the cuffs stayed attached to the wall.

There was surprise, however, when his hand slipped halfway through the handcuffs, getting stuck just before his thumb.

He tugged again, and his hand slipped further through, the cuffs halfway up his thumb and squeezing uncomfortably—but not impossible to get out of. By now, Will had spotted what he was doing, and he sat up with a little more energy than he’d had before.

“Can you get out?” he asked, the hope evident in his voice, and with determined strength Xephos yanked on the cuffs—and pulled his right hand free from the metal. The surprise kept him still for a moment, and his hand stung slightly from the action, but as Will cheered softly beside him something else caught his attention. The smell of smoke he’d noticed earlier had become significantly stronger, and the warm air was quickly becoming very _hot_.

“Will?” he spoke up. “Can you smell that?” He watched as Will sniffed the air curiously, then froze.

“Something’s burning,” Will stated, with a fearful glance towards Xephos. “Something big is burning…”

As he said this, the sound of something crackling entered the room, and with helpless fear both boys watched as small flames started to flicker at the bottom of the basement door.

“No!” Xephos exclaimed, quickly spinning himself around and tugging at the cuffs harshly to free his left wrist. This one was slightly tighter, but the panic that was starting to settle in caused him to tug more desperately, and with the fifth pull his hand slipped free. It stung from the effort, but he wasn’t paying attention to that.

“The house is burning down…” Will was muttering in disbelief, gaze not moving from the flames making their way up the door, even as Xephos pushed himself up and ran towards him. “What the hell…”

“Will, I need, you need, we—” Xephos was struggling to find the right words, and as he pulled at the rope binding Will’s wrists together he eventually settled on, “Get out.”

“I can’t, Xeph,” Will said, giving his own tug at his bindings to prove his point. The thick rope was tight around his wrists, rubbing the skin raw, and the knots were strong and complicated. There was no way Will would be able to pull himself out on his own, and Xephos knew he would struggle to undo the knots without help. “You should— you need to get out of here. If you run now, I think you can make it. Forget about me.”

“No!” Xephos protested, fingers still prying at the rope to try and pull it apart. He was making no progress, though, and the flames had started moving from the door to everything else wooden in the room (which, he noted dryly, was almost everything besides the floor itself). He knew Will was right—Xephos was a pretty fast runner, and he knew the house well enough that if he took off now he could probably find a door and get out without getting too badly burned.

He didn’t want to do that without Will.

“Xephos, please—” Will tried to argue, but Xephos cut him off before he could.

“I’m not leaving you,” he declared, clear and determined despite the tears building in his eyes and the frantic movement of his fingers. Will sighed.

“Even if you free me, it’ll be too late,” he pointed out, although he stopped the argument there. Nothing else was said as Xephos kept pulling and fumbling with the rope, but eventually he gave up and slumped to the ground, tears streaking down his face.

“I can’t,” he said with a sob, and Will looked at him sympathetically, tears gathering in his eyes as well. Usually when he said this, the older boy would tell him that he could do it and encourage him to keep trying. This time, however, he didn’t try to counter him, despite this being the time when they probably needed it the most.

“It’s alright,” Will said instead. “Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s not alright.”

“I know.”

The flames were crawling ever slowly towards them, and Xephos crawled closer to Will so he was cuddled into his cousin’s side, hugging him for a last moment of comfort. The air was starting to get too hot to handle, and Xephos found himself getting more and more drowsy in the heat, but a harsh cough from Will due to the building smoke convinced him to keep his eyes open.

“...We’re dying,” he whispered, the realisation finally sinking in, and he felt more than saw Will nodding beside him.

“We are,” he agreed, voice scratchy and rough, and Xephos hugged him tighter. There was nothing good you could say in this situation; they were going to die, trapped in a basement during a house fire, and that was that.

“...Where’s uncle?” Xephos muttered, a stray thought thrown out into the open air. Will seemed to tense at the mention of his father. “Why isn’t he…”

“Dad wouldn’t have helped us,” Will said curtly, surprisingly certain given the harshness of what he was saying, but Xephos didn’t question it. Something else seemed to be on his mind, as if Will had just realised something important, but he didn’t look like he was going to share so Xephos didn’t ask. His own mind reached its own conclusions about why his uncle wasn’t likely to help them, conclusions that made his stomach spin, and not for the first time he wished that he could disappear so he would stop being a burden to everyone.

The room was getting too hot, too stuffy, and Xephos knew he wasn’t going to last much longer. A series of coughs racked through his body and he shied away from the approaching flames, burying his head into Will’s torso.

“Will,” he croaked out, arms tight around his cousin. “...I love you.”

There was some shifting beside him before Will answered. “I love you too,” he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper at this point. Xephos couldn’t see if Will was looking at him or not, but it really didn’t matter anymore, and with no energy left Xephos let his eyes start to drift closed.

As he did so, he could see the darkness approaching him through his blurry vision. It wasn’t what he expected it to look like; rather, it looked like a massive snake coming towards the two of them, mouth wide open. Unable and unwilling to question it, Xephos let himself get swallowed whole by the darkness.

* * *

Xephos woke up in an ambulance.

_What?_

The last thing he could remember was being in the burning basement with Will, where he was sure that he’d passed out and died in the flames. Yet here he was, no burns on his body or smoke in his lungs, and for a fleeting moment he wondered if he was in some sort of afterlife.

The paramedics and ambulance setting seemed to tell him otherwise.

He wanted to question it, open his mouth and try to ask the paramedics what had happened, but his eyes were heavy and he found that he didn’t have the energy to fight to stay awake. So, confused and unsettled, he let himself drift off again.

The last thing he realised before sleep overtook him was that Will was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Stuck waiting outside as the social worker talked to the owner of the orphanage inside, Xephos watched as another car pulled up to the building. From the car, a young boy climbed fearfully out of the backseat, followed by a strict-looking older woman who ordered him to stand by the wall and wait for her, before sauntering into the building herself.

The boy looked around his age, with messy blond hair and a thin grey jumper hugging his frame. He didn’t say anything to Xephos, almost as if he hadn’t noticed he was there (which was something that had happened quite a bit since the house fire), and he had his arms wrapped around himself as he glanced around nervously. He looked on edge, but also really cold, and with a wince of sympathy Xephos pulled off the scarf that he’d been given by the hospital and held it out in offering. When the boy didn’t respond (didn’t even _look_ at him), he tapped his shoulder almost impatiently.

“Wha—!?” The boy spun around then, completely surprised as he took in Xephos and the scarf. Nothing was said for a couple of seconds, and it took Xephos waving the scarf slightly for the boy to snap out of whatever state he’d gotten himself into. “Where did you come from?”

Annoyingly, he didn’t take the scarf yet.

“I’ve been here the whole time,” Xephos explained, unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “You’re cold. Take the scarf.”

Thankfully, the boy finally reached out and cautiously took the scarf from Xephos’ quickly tiring hand. He still looked nervous, but most of that had been brushed away by a more (fake-looking) uncaring personality. “I didn’t see you,” he said as he slipped it around his neck. “What are you, some kind of ghost boy?”

Instantly, the name hit one of Xephos’ nerves. “I’m not a ghost,” he snapped before he could think about it, quickly regretting it two seconds later. This kind of thing had happened often during his week at the hospital, where he’d wandered around the corridors with nobody sparing a glance at him, or the nurses freaked out about not being able to find him despite him being in his hospital bed. Every time it happened, it annoyed him more—but he hadn’t meant to take out that annoyance on somebody he’d just met.

Luckily, the boy seemed unfazed.

“Whatever you say, ghost boy,” he said off-handedly, most of the nervousness from before replaced with cocky indifference, and Xephos almost growled when he heard the name again.

“My name’s Xephos,” he declared lowly. “Not...stop...stop calling me…” He sighed as his mind stuttered and he couldn’t get the words out, but the boy didn’t seem too bothered by it.

“Don’t call you ghost boy? Alright then.” The boy shrugged it off like it was nothing, then he held his own hand out towards Xephos. “Well, my name’s Lalna. Nice to meet you, Xeph. I think we might be stuck with each other for a while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to clear some stuff up because it's not going to be explained anywhere else (kinda long):  
> 1\. Xephos learned how to talk before the first section. He just stopped at some point, and didn't talk for so long that when he moved into the Strife household he found it hard to start again.  
> 2\. Will is supposed to be around 14-15. My original plan was to make him the younger cousin, but I couldn't get it to work, so he ended up being quite a bit older than Xeph. Yes I chose Will bc of the alien headcanons.  
> 3\. The house fire was caused by Xephos' uncle/Will's father. The general idea (that's never explored bc I don't think Xeph would find this out) was that he was obsessed with getting the boys to be perfect model business children (hence the smart clothes = formal thing Will mentioned) and getting drunk solidified his wants. When he realised that he would never get this (Will was too stubborn/bold, Xephos was too anxious) he snapped, drugging the boys in their sleep and dressing them into formal wear before trapping them in the basement and setting the house on fire. He either ended up arrested or dead (you decide).  
> 4\. The reason Xephos could get out of the handcuffs was because his uncle spent most of the time binding Will and didn't want them to wake up while he was there, so he cuffed Xeph quickly and didn't tighten them properly.  
> 5\. Will was semi-aware of his father's intentions. He attaches himself so strongly to Xephos because he wants to protect him and also have time spent away from his father. He actually figures out that his father set the fire - you can see this when Xephos brings up him up.  
> 6\. In the last section, Xephos and Lalna already have their abilities. Xephos isn't entirely aware of his (like Zylus in the last story)
> 
> Am I going to explain how/why Xephos didn't die? Maybe later. We'll see.


End file.
